Sunday, January 15, 2017

"Keep faith with Labour" pleads by-election leaflet

I promise this will be the last post about the Sandhill by-election in Sunderland. I saw this Labour leaflet on Tuesday when I was there to help deliver Lib Dem election letters. "Keep faith with Labour" was the bit that instantly jumped out to me. Having looked at the campaign and the Labour campaign messages, they offered very little reason for people to "keep the faith" in Labour. There was also a rather arrogant assumption by Labour that people had faith in them in the first place and that all they had to do was tap into that faith to get elected.

Like so many areas of the North East, Labour are the political masters who are remote and out-of-touch. They are seen only at election times and they take too many wards and constituencies for granted. Sunderland may be an extreme example of this but if Labour are to survive, they need to reconnect with communities and the people who live in them. I'm not convinced they are ready to do that.